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Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Wednesday 19th May

Time is creeping up on me again, can you believe its almost halfway through the year? Another week and the girls will be on half terms hols. We are planning a visit to the Royal Bath and West Show although it has been mentioned that I will not be allowed to visit the sheep tent this year. I usually end up talking to farmers and buying fleeces despite the stack I already have - does anyone else have this problem?

This week I am spinning up some Falkland tops, hand dyed by Mandacrafts on Etsy. These are called "Berry Berry Nice" and hopefully will make some fingerless mitts for someones Christmas present.

Just off the Glimakra Julia loom are two scarves woven on a multicoloured hand dyed tencel warp, one scarf is woven with a wool and silk weft, again this is hand dyed and comes from Yarntopia on Etsy and the other scarf has a baby alpaca and silk weft which I have hand dyed in soft blue shades. These are now for sale in my Etsy shop, see the link to the right.

This is the tencel and wool/silk scarf and showing a close up of the scarf above.

This is the tencel and baby alpaca/silk scarf, also with close up of the weave structure above.

These were woven on a four shaft threading for a diamond twill, the same pattern as the jade scarf made last month.

The rugs are now finished, although I am not sure I was very pleased with the results, I think that a lighter cotton warp would be better in future but for now I have to concentrate on producing some more items for the gallery. I am now warping up the loom with a light green silk warp to make a scarf using a hand dyed laceweight merino weft. The laceweight merino was purchased from Cold Harbour mill through their new company FibreHarvest.

The warmer weather is a great time for washing fleece and I do have quite a lot sitting in my garage that really need to be sorted out over the summer, it would be good to be able to get them washed, carded and spun up, so lots of excuses for sitting outside in the garden.